


A Permanent Affliction

by iviscrit



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Cute Kids, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iviscrit/pseuds/iviscrit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three illnesses, three ways. Traces the development of Baavira through sickroom scenes. For terra-7.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Permanent Affliction

“Are you okay?”

Baatar reached for his glasses on the nightstand, blindly fumbling in the dark before his fingers brushed the thin gold frames. “Yeah,” he managed, his voice hoarse from infrequent use and whatever virus had taken up residence in his body. “Yeah,” he repeated after coughing, his voice clearer the second time, “I’m fine. What are you doing here?” He had recognized Kuvira’s voice before he turned on the lamp, and as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in lighting he felt a bit better simply from her presence.

“Su said you hadn’t been feeling well,” she said simply, shutting the door noiselessly and still hovering against the wall. “And I’ll be moving out in a couple of days, so… I don’t know, we had planned to have fun before you got sick and ruined everything,” she teased, folding her arms over her chest.

Baatar winced, a new pain pricking at him in addition to the soreness in his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t want to get sick…”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll just miss being a short walk away, is all.”

“It’s still walking distance,” he pointed out. “You’ll see us as often as ever.”

“It’s different,” Kuvira said quietly, sinking down to the floor and resting her arms on her knees. “You’re…  _insulated_  in here. I won’t be.”

“I feel like I’m suffocating,” Baatar said, forcing a light tone. She didn’t smile, and he debated the wisdom of joining her against the wall. Sitting up too quickly made his head spin, and he grimaced. “Kuvira, I didn’t mean…”

“You’re just congested, you’ll be fine.” Her armor clinked as she ran a hand through her hair, her braid loose and coming apart after a long day of training for the security force. “No, what I meant was people talk about me. I know Su is strict, but I feel safer staying on your grounds. I thought I’d be more excited about living on my own, but the closer I get to moving out permanently the worse it sounds.”

“You won’t be unsafe,” he said, shifting so that he could better face her. “Mom wouldn’t put you in a dangerous area-- Kuvira, there aren’t even dangerous apartment complexes in Zaofu--”

“That’s not what I meant either,” she said, her brows slanting down and her eyes crinkling in frustration. “I meant… people talk. They always have. I…” She seemed to shrink, squeezing her knees to her chest and resting her chin atop them. “I feel as though I’m safe from the remarks, so long as I’m here.”

Baatar pinched the bridge of his nose, the headache suddenly inconsequential. “What remarks?”

“You know.” Her eyes were heavily lidded, her gaze focused on some point he could not see. Moonlight from the window had tinted his room blue, the gadgets from the lab or his own daily tinkering a glowing shade of silver and the green upholstery a deep, melancholy emerald. Kuvira herself was a shadowed figure in the moonlight, the forest green hues of her uniform particularly tenebrous and her hair in an inky woven braid with a piece framing her face. He noticed for the first time dark circles under her eyes; the little smiles of pigmentation could not have been more cruelly ironic in their shape. “You know the ones,” she said after a pregnant pause. “People talk about my role here, how I came here, what I do, my relationship with your family…”

“People always talk,” he said, the words leaving his throat like liquid fire. “You don’t need to pay attention to it--”

“Did you know that some people are scared of me?” she said, voice barely audible. “That I’m some sort of prodigy metalbender, and that it isn’t natural.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” he said, unable to keep his distance anymore. He climbed out of bed, dragging the covers down with him and scooting a bit closer, unable to see her sitting in isolation in her island of moonlight against the wall. “You’re incredible, everyone knows it. Mom said you’re a prodigy. _Grandma_ said you’re a prodigy.”

“I’m not a Beifong,” she said flatly. “If you lose your temper, or-- or if Su does, and we know she does-- it’s overlooked. If  _I_  do, it looks bad. Your family didn’t have to take me in.”

“You’re as good as family,” Baatar said. “If that’s all they say--”

“One of the guards-in-training said I’m leaving the estate because I’m  _older_  now,” she said. Her eyes met his, lachrymose in the dark. “Do you need me to explain, or do you get it?”

“I… can imagine, yeah.”

“He made it sound like I… or we, or Huan for all I know… I don’t need to repeat what he said,” Kuvira muttered, stemming the flow of unchecked bitter words. “You get the idea.”

“I doubt anyone else thinks that,” he said lamely, hoping the dark obscured his blush. “Besides, if anyone gives you a hard time, Mom will stop it. No one wants the governor angry at them--”

“People say that I found a way to bend through the domes,” she said, a humorless laugh escaping her. “They say Su found me on the grounds and a part of the dome broken… dismantled, I don’t know. They say I made it into the running for the security force so early because I’m not  _just_  her protege, that I--” Her mouth compressed into a thin line, and she was silent for a while before she spoke again. “I don’t know why they think this. It’s not like anyone knows where I came from, even Su doesn’t know the details I told you that one time.”

“I don’t know what to say, Kuvira.” He shrugged awkwardly. “People say things when they’re jealous, I guess. I’d give you a hug,” he added, his face heating again, “but I don’t want to get you sick.”

“Thanks for listening to me,” she said, suddenly across the carpet and sitting close beside him, her face to his and her head cocked to the side. Impulsively, she looped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in for a hug. It was awkward, his left arm crushed between them and his right tangled in the covers before he managed to return the embrace. “If you’re contagious you’re not invited to my apartment,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

“ _You_  hugged  _me_!”

“Fair,” she said, pulling back. “Um… if you’re feeling better, maybe we could do something to wrap up my last week here... I didn’t mean to make this visit so depressing.”

“Of course.” He had wished her goodnight, and the following day was pleased to learn her departure had been delayed; Kuvira had contracted the virus.

o0o

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kuvira snapped, seizing the extra pillow and covering her face. “Turn off the light, I’m not getting out of bed yet.”

Baatar chuckled, sitting on the edge of the mattress. “Kuvira, it’s past eight. I let you sleep in because you weren’t well last night--”

“ _What_?!” She threw the pillow aside and sat up, her hand going to her temple and her face screwing up in discomfort. “You know we’re on a tight schedule, you were supposed to wake me up two hours ago--”

“You were practically delirious,” he said. “And I can see that a proper night of sleep did nothing for you, so I’m going to call the healer in. I told you staying out was a bad idea…”

“The border needed securing, we were outnumbered, and no one else was going to do it,” she retorted. “ _You_  didn’t suggest any alternatives, Vice President.”

“I distinctly remember begging you to bundle up before conducting a scrimmage in freezing rain,” Baatar said, his tone bored as his inspected his nails. “I thought you’d at least think about your health, since ‘orphaning a nation’ is the last thing you’d want to do.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Then you’re not well, either,” he countered. “If you don’t want to see a healer, why don’t you let me bring you something for the headache? Or is it more than a headache? I think it’s more than a headache.”

“I just need tea,” she muttered, slowly sliding her feet off the edge of the bed and standing. “Or… yes, just tea. That’s a good start.”

“Sore throat?” Baatar said innocently.

“Mind your own business.”

“Feeling cold?” he prodded, taking the ends of the coverlet in his hands and wrapping her up. “No, you’re a bit warm… feeling febrile?”

“As the vice president you’re supposed to take over when I’m indisposed,” Kuvira said drily. “Go see to our army, Baatar. Xi will understand if I can’t drill the infantry this morning.”

“So you’re taking a day off, good,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll bring you something in a little bit, take care of yourself for now.”

He returned to find Kuvira buried under the covers, the pillow snugly anchored over her head by her hands and her body curled up into a little ball. She shifted when she heard the door open, and waved one of her hands in a comically weak gesture; he laughed in spite of himself, setting down the tea, sweet breakfast dumplings, and prescribed medicine from the healer on the end table. “I thought I told you to handle things for me this morning,” Kuvira said from beneath the pillow. “Get out.”

“Is that paperwork?” he said incredulously. “Kuvira! I told you to take a break. You can’t even see anything under there!”

“I was going to start in a minute,” she said. “Now go.”

“I’m staying until I see you follow the healer’s orders,” he muttered. “You’re acting like a child. Remember when you were fifteen, and you delayed moving out by a week because you refused to take anything for that virus?”

“The virus that was your fault?” She peeked up at him, shifting the pillows. “Oh, we don’t know if I’m contagious. You should leave.  _Please_ ,” she added, her voice ending in a plaintive whine that made Baatar simultaneously want to laugh and take her in his arms.

“I brought you tea,” he said, placing the cup in her hands. “And medicine--”

“Medicine is for the weak,” she said staunchly, taking a delicate sip. “But thank you, I’d kiss you if I could.”

Baatar sat on the edge of the bed again, stroking his thumb along the protruding ridges of her knuckles. The engagement ring was cool against her hot skin, and he felt a tremor pass through her as she set the teacup down. “You were having bizarre fever dreams,” he said gently. “In case you thought I let you sleep in for no good reason. You didn’t seem very well-rested when I came to wake you up at six.”

Kuvira flushed from something other than the flu. “Elaborate.”

“More of… well, the same,” he said quietly. She would know what that meant; nightmares about her abandonment and the cruelty she had undergone to display her bending had been common enough, in his experience. They had subsided of late; evidently the illness had caused a relapse of the night terrors.

“Ah.” Her fingers interlaced with his, and she allowed him to adjust her pillows to prop her up without complaint this time. “Thank you for… intruding, Baatar. I don’t know what I would do without you, sometimes.”

“Refuse to see a healer until you’re on the verge of death from overwork,” he teased, arranging her papers on a tray table for her. “If keeping that from happening is intruding, I’m glad to do it. Now if I look away, will you take your medicine?”

She didn’t reply, but when he checked in some hours later the pills were gone and she was asleep again, her fingers still curled around the pen and her hair in a tangle around her face.

“The way you act, you’d think it’s a permanent affliction,” Baatar murmured, gently working through the knots with deft fingers, arranging the messy locks into a neat plait without waking her. “Get well soon,” he added, pressing a kiss to her hot cheek before clearing the nightstand of her dishes. She stirred slightly in her sleep, and as he closed her door behind him he smiled. He thought he heard his name fall from her lips, albeit muffled by the pillow.

o0o

“Are you okay?” Su’s words were met with silence, and she tried again, reaching for Baatar’s shoulder. “Sweetie, you can tell me what’s wrong. I’m not mad at you, I’m just glad that you’re not badly hurt.”

“I don’t want to talk right now, Mom.” There was new gauze over the gash on his jaw, and a row of neat stitches holding the broken skin together. The hospital was in pandemonium, with the left wing neutralized from the spirit blast and the staff working overtime to attend to the new patients being wheeled in. The city had been a ghost town when Kuvira’s colossus had marched through its streets, but he was not surprised to see the injured; he was more surprised --and relieved-- that they were relatively few in number.

“Does it hurt?” Su asked gently. “Maybe we should ask for painkillers? The healer said you likely had a concussion too--”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can take for this,” he said shortly, his voice breaking on the last few words. “I feel sick, Mom. I just want to be left alone right now.”

“It’ll pass,” she said, pulling him against her for a hug. It felt stifling, suffocating, irritating, but he accepted it with a tired resignation. “It’s not permanent, sweetie. You’ll feel better soon.”

“I wanted it to be permanent,” he said without thinking, newly aware of the random aches accrued from the blast and a dull, unceasing ache that couldn’t be physiological in nature. “I don’t know what I want now.”

“If you want to be left alone, I’ll be with your siblings in the waiting room,” Su said gently. “How long do you need?”

“An eternity,” he said dully. “Thanks, Mom… I’ll be out soon.” He watched her go, mustering up an encouraging smile before she disappeared through the doorway.

The hospital felt overwhelmingly empty despite the host of people, patients and staff alike, that filled the antiseptic chamber. In the white-tiled room with starched white bedclothes in every cot, the beginning rays of sunlight casting a cheery glow, he had expected to feel a bit better. Instead, Baatar felt dizzy as though he had suffered sudden blood loss.

“It’s not a permanent affliction,” he said to himself, his tone bracing. “Get yourself together, this isn’t permanent…this isn’t even illness...”

The inexplicable hollowness in his chest was not wholly unexpected. It was impossible to rank on a pain scale, impossible to treat with medication, and impossible to surgically correct. For the first time, he had encountered a permanent sickness, a sickness made all the more cruel by the very nature of its acquisition and its permanence.

**Author's Note:**

> For terra-7. :)
> 
> Kuvira's a lousy patient. She takes after the author with that "Medicine is for the weak!" nonsense. XD


End file.
